NPR’s Marketlace has a very balanced story on payday lending.  Pay special attention to the University of Chicago professor who discusses the need for the loans and makes some reasonable suggestions.

PDLindustryblog fills us  in.

Whenever we go too long without a Warren Bolton column, it just doesn’t feel right.   From his 283rd anti-payday lending screed:

WITH THE S.C. House having capitulated and passed a bill feigning to regulate payday lending, and many in the Senate eager to do the same, possibly even this week, some lawmakers who want strict rules might be willing to allow the legalized loan sharks to continue their predatory ways.

Oh, Warren.  You’re not even trying.  You can do better than that.  You’re getting hackneyed, trite, boring.

We had to read this twice.

As we’ve said, focusing on campaign contributions is simply lazy, gratuitous, biased reporting:

A study by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington found Gutiérrez 11th among Congressional recipients of campaign donations from the payday-loan industry. The study says Gutiérrez accepted $18,500 dollars from the industry during the last election cycle.

So?  How much money did he raise in total?   How much money did banks and credit unions give him?

What are you waiting for?   ConsumersRightsCoalition.org.

This guy seems to have figured it out.   And Walletpop has some thoughts.

PDLindustryblog has some thoughts.

This Congressional Quarterly story pretty much sums up the bind Rep.  Gutierrez has put himself in with his Payday Loan Reform bill:

Meanwhile, in an effort to fend off federal regulation, the industry’s trade group, the Community Financial Services Association, has in the last two years ramped up its lobbying, paying more than $1.5 million to 11 lobbying firms. Among the hired guns is Ben Nighthorse Campbell, the Colorado Republican who retired from the Senate in 2004.

Despite the consumer advocates’ successes, Gutierrez says they “are fighting an uphill battle against better-funded lobbyists” and should settle for his bill. At a hearing this month by the House Financial Services subcommittee that he chairs, Gutierrez lashed out at Jean Ann Fox, director of financial services at the Consumer Federation of America for her intransigence. “Ms. Fox,” he said, “you don’t like the payday. I don’t like the payday. You wish to eliminate it. You wish to ban it. That’s not possible.”

Calling something reform doesn’t make it so.  It’s an anti-payday lending bill.

This is a fair and balanced article about payday lending versus credit union alternatives: 

About a half-dozen credit unions nationwide have gone head-to-head with the payday industry, says Steve Schlein, spokesman for the Community Lenders Association of America, a payday lenders group. “Whenever we’ve investigated, we found very few are cheaper than payday loans,” he said.

Indeed, for a single two-week loan of $100, a customer would be better off at a payday loan shop than at St. Louis Community Credit Union, figuring both interest and the credit union’s annual fee.

As usual, CFSA’s Steven Schlein is out on the front lines defending the industry brilliantly.